Two Designer Skill Sets: Perspective Taking and Creativity

Jaewoo Joo, University of Toronto, Canada

This study attempts to address what psychological skill sets designers need to create appealing new product concepts. Different than previous literature exclusively focusing on a list of skill sets that improve concept originality, I suggest perspective taking as one skill set to improve concept appropriateness. People who are likely to or are instructed to take the perspective of another identify more problems, resulting in more appropriate new product concept. Perspective taking, however, does not guarantee more solutions that creativity guarantees.